Emails to the Editor...

You may have noticed the uncharacteristic lack of updating for a few days.



Here in the Midwest USA we suffered an ice storm, knocking out power. I finally got back online yesterday.



Then I discovered other "problems," good problems actually.



Traffic to this site has spiked upward by nearly 30% since the beginning of the year. Newsletter subscription rates have increased 40%. RSS feed subscriptions are up significantly, too.



Thanks for visiting and subscribing.



I believe I know some reasons for these increases, and I will write about the reasons very soon. Other small businesses and any company marketing online may find the reasons of interest. They have to do with Google, the long tail, and an exciting new RSS tool that I am beta testing.



Meanwhile, the number of emails I get is also up. I still have over a dozen unanswered reader emails, which I will try to get to over the next few days. I try to respond to all legitimate emails, even briefly. However, the volume has risen and I'm not sure how much longer I can continue doing so.



Several people have asked whether I will be summarizing the trends predictions articles I've been running for the past two weeks. The answer is "yes" -- sort of. I will be publishing my own list of 2005 trends affecting small businesses, as soon as I finish a book project I am working on. (Meanwhile, check out our 2004 trends list, which resides over at our companion site, TrendTracker.)



Other emails ask permission to reproduce articles from Small Business Trends or TrendTracker. The answer there is "yes." All we ask in return is that you mention our site by name and link back to it. You might want to send me a follow-up email with a URL to where the article is reproduced, and I will list it in "Links to this Article." That's especially important for general business sites and other non-blog sites, because they are not reported in the Technorati or Bloglines services that I use to discover links, and I might miss them.



Thanks again, everyone, and stay warm and dry.

Top 2005 eBusiness Trends

Here's a list of Top 10 eBusiness Trends for 2005, from eMarketer.com. It's a far-reaching list, covering many different technologies:

• Alternative Advertising: Major brand owners are concerned about TV commercials losing eyeballs, and so they will be spending more of their advertising budgets in different arenas. The big winners will be online, including rich media and overall online ad spending. Also, marketers are figuring out how to incorporate the Internet into word-of-mouth marketing. (And many word of mouth campaigns will involve blogs.)





• RSS: Not only will usage of RSS newsfeeds grow, but marketers will attempt to leverage them for advertising.





• AOL Changes: AOL has lost 4 million subscribers in two years and will have to change its business. It will begin to make a larger percentage of revenues from online advertising. (Of course, we all know its ISP service is a bit of a dinosaur in these days of cheap, pervasive broadband and great Web browers.)





• On-Demand TV: Time-shifted viewing and ad-skipping, together with video on demand, are changing the television landscape.





• Wireless Broadband: We will start to see more video on our cellphones.





• Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): Big-box retailers like Wal-Mart are mandating that vendors implement RFID inventory tracking. (If you want to know more, please visit my other blog, the RFID Weblog.)





• Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP): Businesses and consumers are finally becoming aware of voice calls over the Internet, in growing numbers.





• Linux: Linux adoption in the enterprise continues, especially as companies upgrade servers.





• Cross-Channel Retail: Expect increasing integration of retailer efforts across all platforms: Web, catalog and stores.





• IT Security: You've heard it before, but the message is the same this year again: security will be a top spending priority among CIOs.

Editor's Note: This is the tenth in our series of articles on 2005 trends predictions. We are comparing and contrasting trends predictions from different sources that will impact the small business market in 2005 and beyond. Here is our running list of trend prediction posts:

Anti-Trending and Other Trends for 2005

Entrepreneur's Top Trends for 2005

Small Business is Itself a Trend

Top Technology Trends for 2005

Top Global Consumer Trends

Inc.'s Trends for Entrepreneurs in 2005

Top Travel Trends for 2005

More Top Trends for 2005

The Small Business Advocate's 2005 Predictions

The Small Business Advocate's 2005 Predictions

Jim Blasingame, the Small Business Advocate, has issued his list of Top Predictions for 2005 in his newsletter (free subscription required). There are a large number of predictions -- 18 to be exact -- but I'll highlight just a few of the most universally relevant predictions:

• 2005 Prediction: China will resist pressure from the U.S. to allow its currency, the yuan, to float, instead of being pegged to the dollar. Due to its poorly operated credit sector, China considers its growing economy too fragile for the yuan to float.





• 2005 Prediction: The European Union's economic growth rate will be less than 2.2%. Saddled with systemic socialistic business practices, the EU is struggling to be competitive in the 21st century's global marketplace.





• 2005 Prediction: The U.S. economy will grow at an annual rate of over 4%.





• 2005 Prediction: The annual unemployment rate will end the year below 5%.





• 2005 Prediction: The United States will continue to lead the world in promoting entrepreneurship, but also watch the new entries into the European Union, like Poland, plus India, and yes, China.

Editor's Note: This is the ninth in our series of articles on 2005 trends predictions. We are comparing and contrasting trends predictions from different sources that will impact the small business market in 2005 and beyond. Here is our running list of trend prediction posts:

Anti-Trending and Other Trends for 2005

Entrepreneur's Top Trends for 2005

Small Business is Itself a Trend

Top Technology Trends for 2005

Top Global Consumer Trends

Inc.'s Trends for Entrepreneurs in 2005

Top Travel Trends for 2005

More Top Trends for 2005

PowerBlog Review: Binza

Editor's note: As we start another year, we are excited to present the forty-sixth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of other weblogs.



We enjoy reviewing blogs that are being put to unusual purposes, and Binza is one of them.



This blog is an interesting example of using a blog as a working tool, to practice writing and to hone the author's writing skills. Chris Bowcutt is that author.



Chris is a professional writer, and has a freelance copywriting site called Binza Group. He uses the blog as one of several methods to promote his writing. He also uses the blog to practice something he calls his hobby -- speechwriting:

"Speechwriting is not a business but a side hobby of mine. One of my goals is to eventually write speeches for high-level people -- but I've yet to build that business! So I write and deliver speeches for fun in my Toastmasters club (a public speaking club). I write mainly to educate and inspire.



The blog has been excellent in helping me hone my writing skills and also to feel more comfortable expressing myself."

The blog sidebar lists several speeches Chris has created (when was the last time you saw speeches listed on a blog sidebar?). One of those, entitled "Responsibility," speaks of the need for people to take individual responsibility for themselves. In addition to having meaning for him, Chris says this speech has resonated the most with audiences.



Unlike a lot of business blogs, Binza doesn't try to maintain a niche focus. Chris writes about anything that interests him, all the while practicing his writing. After all, it's the act of writing that is important to Chris.



Binza has a long history -- long for a weblog, that is. Chris was in the World Trade Center on that fateful day on September 11, 2001. He had started the blog a week before that.



Something unstudied and spontaneous in this blog makes you want to keep reading it. Few of the topics are about business subjects. But the business purpose of the site is there and it stands out.



That said, Chris sees future opportunity in helping others with their blogs, noting "the more I blog and the more I see its value in the marketplace the more likely it is I'll be incorporating 'blog consulting' into my freelance work."



Chris blogs from New York. The name of his blog, Binza, is the name of the neighborhood he lived in from 1984-1989, in Kinshasa, Zaire, (now DR Congo), for which Chris has fond memories. The graphic in the blog header is the (now obsolete) Zairean flag.



The Power: The Power of the Binza blog is in the way it is being used expressly to develop the author's writing skills. Blogs have been described as online diaries, and as such are perfect for this purpose. Unlike the diaries of old -- private items on paper -- the author can point propsective clients to the blog to view his writing samples.

Blogging a Fast Growing Trend

Readership of blogs and RSS news feeds in the United States is growing rapidly, according to a hot-off-the-presses study. I predict that blogs and RSS will continue to be hot Internet trends in 2005.



The just-released Pew Internet and American Life survey profiles this astonishingly fast growth. The survey was conducted in November of 2004, and the following quotes from the survey summarize the results:

• 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people.





• 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers.





• 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators to get the news and other information delivered from blogs. This is a first-time measurement ... and is an indicator that this application is gaining an impressive foothold.





• The interactive features of many blogs are also catching on: 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.





• At the same time, for all the excitement about blogs and the media coverage of them, blogs have not yet become recognized by a majority of internet users. Only 38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term "blog" means.

By now anyone reading blogs knows they are becoming more popular by the day. What's so surprising about this report, to me, is just how popular they are becoming so quickly. They're like a juggernaut.



The data about RSS feeds is what I expected, also. RSS is the future of how readers will access content-rich websites.



However, only the tech-savvy are using RSS today.



Eventually RSS feeds could replace e-zines and newsletters. But it will be at least two years before significant numbers of people use RSS. Meanwhile, businesses have lots of time to make the transition.